


Wishing for the Cloths of Heaven

by scibher



Series: Any time, any place [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Eventual Happy Ending, Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Priest Michael (Supernatural), Recreational Drug Use, Smoking, Teen Romance, Teenagers, they grow up tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2018-12-07 10:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11622123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scibher/pseuds/scibher
Summary: Kansas, 1994. Michael Moran is assigned to help Lucifer Connolly with math. Instead of the egotistical brat Lucifer's famed to be, he finds someone who he can't get enough of, with dreams of getting out. They're quick to fall for each other- but Lucifer is quick to leave, too.





	1. The Rose of Peace

 

_If Michael, leader of God's host_

_When Heaven and Hell are met_

_Looked down upon him from Heaven's door-post_

_He would his deeds forget._

 

_Brooding no more upon God's wars_

_In his divine homestead_

_He would go weave out of the stars_

_A chaplet for his head._

 

_*_

 

“Michael Moran?”

Michael stopped pretending to be staring contemplatively into middle-distance and looked up. His friends around him quietened too, turning to stare at the kid who had spoken. He was a freshman, small in stature, the school-required blazer still on despite the sweaty heat in the canteen.

“Yeah?” Michael said, putting his sandwich down.

“The principal wants to see you,” the kid said breathlessly, before he turned on his heel and near enough ran away.

Michael’s friends turned to smirk at him. No one got called to the principal’s office unless they were in trouble. He stood, wiping the crumbs on his hands to the floor, mouth drying.

“You reckon he saw us smoking?” Zach asked nervously as Michael picked his bag up, slinging it onto his shoulders.

“You’re the only one who’s not eighteen, Zach, so he wouldn’t be asking for Michael,” Balthazar pointed out lightly, pulling a disgusted look as he wiped down the cafeteria cutlery. “You know, I’m thinking of becoming a vegan just to have an excuse not to eat this trash.”

Zach groaned loudly as Michael dusted off his blazer arms nervously, wondering what he could have possibly done wrong. “You’re annoying enough as it is, Balth. Anyway, this is Kansas. You’d be starved in a week.”

Balthazar just waved a graceful hand at him in dismissal. He turned his gaze to Michael. “You better run, boy. Mr Brandis gets more pissed off by the minute.”

“We’ll save you a seat in geography,” Zach said sympathetically as Michael picked up the remainder of his lunch. He replied with a tight-lipped smile, dumping his sandwich and milk carton in the bin on his way out.

What could he have done? He was a good kid, as far as the teachers knew. He had a high GPA, he handed his homework in on time, and he drove drunk girls from the sister school home from parties if they passed out. He never did anything that would warrant a trip to the principal’s office. Nothing openly, anyway.

He knocked quietly on the door before slipping in. Mr Brandis, a bald sweat-patch of a man, kept scribbling on forms. He gestured to the seat in front of his desk. Michael sat, rubbing his palms on his trousers. The room was hot and stuffy, despite it only being February. He fixed his tie subtly, tightening it to disguise the fact he kept his top button open. Mr Brandis turned to him suddenly, and Michael gave him a nervous smile.

“Now, Mr Moran, I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here.” Mr Brandis poured him a glass of water from the jug he kept on his desk, and Michael took it gladly.

“I mean, you’re a good kid. Good grades, good record. But on top of that, you’re a nice kid.” He showed Michael his yellowed teeth in some attempt of a smile. Michael sipped on his water politely.

“That’s why I think you’ll be perfect. You know Lucifer Connolly?”

Michael’s mouth stopped working. He took the glass away from his face, giving a small cough. “Um. Yeah. Know _of_ him, anyway.”

“He’s failing math. It’s strange; he was doing well in it up until now. He’s got a GPA close to your own, and we don’t want him falling behind. I’ve tried getting some teachers to help him, but…” Mr Brandis shrugged. “I think he’d respond better to someone his own age.”

Oh, Michael knew that was a lie. Balthazar loved to gossip, and so did the teacher he was trying to get into bed with. He’d retold the stories she’d given him of the staffroom talks, the young maths teacher openly weeping in frustration after an hour with Connolly while the other teachers looked on in pity.

“If you were open to it, his parents would be immensely grateful- as would the school, of course. They’ve already said you’d be more than welcome to tutor him in their house.”

Michael opened his mouth, hoping to formulate an excuse, but Brandis spoke over him.

“The school would be so grateful, in fact, that the C you got on the geography paper last month may just… become an A.” He raised his eyebrows at him, and Michael took another sip of water.

“Um. I’d be more than happy to help him.” He shifted in his chair, looking about the room. “How often…?”

“Oh, once or twice a week would be fine, Michael. More, if you think he needs it. This is in your hands.” Mr Brandis beamed at him. “You really are a fine young man, you know. This is incredibly kind of you to do.”

Michael smiled weakly, standing. Mr Brandis stood too, taking the glass from Michael and shaking his hand. Michael tried not to pull a face of disgust at his damp palm pressed against his own dry one.

“Is tomorrow alright for you? Do you know where he lives?”

Michael nodded. He knew Lucifer lived only a few streets away, and he’d rather follow the kid home like a creep than stay in the room for longer than necessary. “Tomorrow’s fine with me, sir.”

“Excellent, Michael. On your way now- the bell’s about to ring. You have geography next, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr Brandis dropped a wrinkled eyelid in an old man’s version of a wink. “Go on, then. Tuck your shirt in on your way.”

Michael blinked, stepping back towards the door. “I will, sir.”

“See you later, Moran.”

Michael sighed deeply once he’d left the room. Connolly was meant to be unbearable- but on the other hand, a perfect GPA was too much to resist. He’d find a way to connect with the kid. They must have something in common- a book they both liked, a film they’d both seen. Something. Anything.

*

“I can’t believe you’re actually doing it.”

“Well, Balthazar, that’s not helpful.”

Michael stood collecting books from his locker the next day, loading them into his bag. Zach and Balthazar flanked him, leaning on the lockers either side of him. Only a few kids were still roaming the halls- the final bell had gone ten minutes before, but they had to stay behind to not get caught smoking their daily cigarettes behind the bleachers.

“I can’t believe this school,” Balthazar said, shaking his head. “Connolly’s a class-A prick. Everyone knows that.”

Michael just shrugged.

“Seriously, Mike, try and find a way to back out of it,” Zach said, voice full of concern. “He’s meant to be awful. My cousin sat next to him in world history last year, and he said he really thinks he’s too good for everyone. He’ll actually say those words.”

Michael shrugged again, taking out his chemistry work and stuffing it into his bag. “I’m tutoring him, Zach. I’m not trying to be his friend.”

“Tell us all the bitchy things he says,” Balthazar said in his airy manner, before slamming Michael’s locker door shut for him. “Come on. My pack of reds is calling.”

Michael just rolled his eyes as he followed them out to the back. Sure, he was a good kid and all, but Balthazar was a smooth-talking bastard when it came to convincing him and Zach to do things, and their daily ritual was quite pleasant. He liked the warmth it left in his stomach, and the dizzy high he got from it.

They sat in their usual spot, Balthazar lighting the cigarettes for all of them. Michael got passed the first one. He took a long, thoughtful drag.

“Can’t believe you’re seriously going to go there, Mike,” Balthazar murmured around Zach’s cigarette. He passed it over, and then lit his own. “His parents are meant to be alright,” he added, smoke curling out of his mouth as he spoke. “Can’t picture how two good parents could produce a kid like that, though.”

“By spoiling him rotten,” Zach muttered.

“Probably. You call me when you’re done, Mike. Call both of us.”

Michael said nothing. He just watched the ash grow, the thin trail of smoke heading towards the sky in a near-straight line.

*

He walked slowly towards Connolly’s house. He’d followed him home the day before, so he knew which house it was. Knowing he lived in a welcoming brick house didn’t make him any more eager to go in, though.

Connolly flung the door open before he’d even knocked. He raised an eyebrow at him wordlessly, and stepped aside to let him in.

He led him to the dining room silently, pointing to a chair before leaving immediately. Michael sighed heavily, taking out some paper and some math problems. Lucifer was rich, he noted dully. Only rich people cared enough to have a grand piano that matched the wood of their dining table.

He came back a few minutes later with a jug of pink-tinted lemonade, the glasses complete with lemon slices and ice. He couldn’t help but stare as Lucifer slammed it onto the table, setting a glass in front of Michael with force.

“My mother’s orders,” he said, pouring them both a glass. “Don’t think it was me. I don’t want you here.”

“That makes two of us, then.”

Lucifer raised an eyebrow sharply. “Feel free to leave.”

They stared at each other unblinkingly. It was a little hard to take the boy seriously, with his messy blond hair and pink lemonade. The moment to take Lucifer up on the offer passed.

“I’m here to teach you math,” Michael replied calmly. Lucifer set the jug down.

“What a privilege. You know, Michael _Moron_ , I bet you give the best math lessons in the country.”

“Very original. I don’t think I’ve heard that one since sixth grade.”

Lucifer just sneered. Michael let the sticky atmosphere sit for a while before opening his math textbook.

“Alright.” He flipped to the contents page, pushing the book in Lucifer’s direction. “What is it you’re having trouble with?”

Lucifer just stared, silently, before running his thin hand down the whole double-page spread.

Michael blinked, feeling a little taken back. He turned to the beginning of chapter one.

“No, no, I didn’t mean…” Lucifer sighed, taking the book and closing it. “It’s just… math in general. I don’t like the concept.”

Michael frowned slightly. “And this is a… recent thing?”

“Not really.”

“It’s only recently that your math grades have been affected, though,” he pointed out. Lucifer frowned back at him in the same way, crossing his legs beneath him.

“It’s only recently that math got hard.”

Michael snorted, taking the textbook back from him and setting it aside. “Right. Go on. Tell me what it is that you disagree with.”

“I think there’s more to life than numbers,” was his immediate reply. Michael sat back in his chair in surprise. “I think there’s better ways to spend my times than fucking about with numbers for no reason. There’s no beauty in it, there’s no… art. There’s no philosophy-”

“There is,” Michael interrupted. Lucifer tilted his head, lips pressing together. He reached across Michael, wrist brushing against his chest as he picked up the textbook. He flipped through it, the sound of the pages slapping each other filling the room. He let it drop back onto the table.

“Where, exactly?”

Michael took the textbook back, wetting his lips under Lucifer’s hard gaze. He turned to the first graph he saw, handing it back to Lucifer. Neither of them spoke, but from his furrowed brows, the graph didn’t mean too much.

“Here,” Michael said, pointing to the graph. “Whenever you do a graph where Y is a function of X, you’re using Cartesian coordinates.”

Lucifer shrugged, face blank.

“Cartesian. René Descartes- _cogito ergo sum._ ”

“I think, therefore I am,” Lucifer translated. He looked back to the book suspiciously. “That was him?”

Michael nodded, taking a sip of the lemonade. It had a faint rose-like taste to it.

“Lots of mathematicians philosophised. Think about it- would you rather read a book on philosophy that’s too flowery to comprehend, or one that’s logical and to the point?”

“The latter,” Lucifer murmured, handing the book back, eyes turning to the window.

“Plato talked about maths in The Republic,” Michael continued, not wanting Lucifer to get too lost in his own thoughts. Sure enough, his eyes turned back, fixing on Michael’s face. Michael felt himself flush, and he looked back down to the textbook.

“What did he say?”

Michael cleared his throat as quietly as he could. “’Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument.’”

Lucifer was staring at him, unblinking, his eyes burning a hole into Michael’s very soul.

“’The masters of the art steadily repel and ridicule anyone who attempts to divide absolute unity when he is calculating, and if you divide, they multiply, taking care that one shall continue one and not become lost…’”

Lucifer had leaned forward slightly, and Michael could feel his heartbeat quicken, thumping against the thin skin at the hollow of his neck. He was struggling not to stare back at Lucifer, and get lost in his eyes.

“’…in fractions.’”

The smallest of smiles touched Lucifer’s face. A few minutes ago, Michael would have assumed it was a smirk. He wasn’t so sure now.

“You know your Plato, I’ll give you that.”

Michael shrugged. “I like math. I like the thoughts behind it, too. It can be pretty hard to care about it if all it feels like is plugging in numbers and checking log books. I get why you’ve stopped acing every test. I understand.”

Lucifer hummed quietly, an interested, tentative note. He reached to open the book in Michael’s hands, and as Lucifer’s pale hand brushed against Michael’s tanned one, an urgent part of his brain reminded him Lucifer’s parents weren’t home.

“Trig’s probably my worst topic,” he said quietly, tapping a neat nail against the page. “Moran’s Irish, right?”

“What?” Michael said, tearing his eyes from the curving graphs on the page to Lucifer’s face again. He looked faintly amused, forcing Michael to realise he was the only one bothered by any of this.

“Moran. Your surname’s Irish.”

Michael swallowed. “So’s yours.”

Lucifer laughed, swirling his lemonade with his pinkie finger. “Good observation.”

“Like James Connolly,” Michael added, needing to prove himself a step above the rest.

 _What rest?_ a part of him asked. _You’re the only one who’s had a conversation longer than three minutes with the guy._

“That’s right,” Lucifer said, sounding a shade surprised. “You know much Irish history?”

He shook his head. “Just the bare bones of it.”

Lucifer was staring at him again, pinkie still in the lemonade. “You wanna go to Ireland?”

“Now?” Michael asked, and Lucifer laughed, taking his pinkie out the lemonade and drying it on his school tie.

“Sure,” he said, resting his cheek on his palm. Michael would have bet a million dollars on Lucifer’s palms being cool and soft, yet dry- a million miles away from Mr Brandis’ sweaty one.

“Seriously?” he asked, and Lucifer laughed again- a light, genuine laugh.

“No, Michael. Come on. Channel your inner mathematician. Teach me trig.”

Michael left the house two hours later, book under his arm and head in the clouds. He ate dinner and did his homework in the same daze, the fog only lifting as he tried to sleep. He normally smoked golds, not reds- the difference in size probably contributed to the dizzy feeling whenever Lucifer had brushed a hand, or gave him a smile. He was probably jerking Michael around.

Still, as Michael reached for his rosary for his nightly prayer, he couldn’t help but wonder why Lucifer would be nice to him if he really was just messing with his head.


	2. The Two Trees

 

_Beloved, gaze in thine own heart_

_The holy tree is growing there;_

_From joy in the holy branches start,_

_And all the trembling flowers they bear._

 

_*_

“The fuck do you mean, ‘ _he was alright_?’”

Michael gave a small shrug, chewing on his thumb. “It’s not too hard of a concept to understand.”

“Good god, man.” Balthazar looked truly pained, sitting back in his chair and sighing. “Zach’s going to explode when you tell him.”

“Zach doesn’t need to know, then.”

He met Balthazar’s hard gaze with his own apathetic one. He wasn’t going to lie to his friends and tell them Lucifer had been an unbearable prick. Not when he could still taste the rose lemonade in his mouth, and feel his cold fingers brushing against his own.

“You’re a terrible judge of character, Mikey.”

Michael just shrugged. He didn’t care what anyone thought- Lucifer hadn’t been a bad person to hang out with. A part of him was disappointed that he’d told Michael he only needed tutoring once a week.

“So he didn’t talk about anyone? He didn’t act like a dickhead?”

“No, Balth,” Michael sighed. He was beyond glad Zachariah was ill- having the two of them questioning him would have been unbearable.

Of course, it would have been even better if Balthazar was ill, too. Then he’d have an excuse to wander over to the music room he knew Lucifer spent his lunchtimes alone, and he could pretend he needed to get something; perhaps mentioning his friends were ill, and see what Lucifer would say. See what Lucifer would play on the piano there, too. He was pretty sure the polished grand in the dining room had been a Steinway and Sons- no one bought a piano like that to simply let it collect dust.

Balthazar clicked his fingers in Michael’s face. He jumped.

“You back in the land of the living, Mikey? What’s _wrong_ with you today? Did Connolly drug you or something?”

“Connolly…? Oh, Lucifer. No.”

His friend simply gave him a disapproving hum, pushing Michael's ham sandwich and milk further towards him, making a show of brushing his hands afterwards. “You’ve barely ate.”

“Not hungry.”

Balthazar’s forehead crinkled in a frown, but he said nothing. Michael just drummed his fingers on the canteen table.

The rest of the day passed quickly enough. He had no lessons with Lucifer- but he caught a glimpse of another blond-haired boy through the window, and his heart began to pound in his chest. He tried not to think much of it.

Geography melted into math, which melted into Latin, which ended with the school bell interrupting his thoughts as he stared at the display on the wall. _Cogito ergo sum._ The way Lucifer had turned to look at him, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted, parting further to translate it.

If he really was the egotistical brat that everyone insisted he was, he figured it was fair enough. He had the looks to warrant it.

He followed Balthazar to the back of the bleachers, the two of them sitting in silence. Michael provided the cigarettes this time- Balthazar’s had made him dizzy.

They parted at the school gates, Balthazar smoothing down the lapels of his blazer before giving him a small salute of goodbye.

It was unnaturally warm for Kansas in February. He wanted to shrug his blazer off, but the weather could change at the drop of a hat, and he didn’t want to take it off just to put it back on again.

Perhaps he was a touch lazy.

He let himself become lost again, lost in the roses of the lemonade, the ink of Lucifer’s fountain pen as he’d copied down questions and worked them out. He’d gotten every single on correct- no surprises there, really. He was so lost that he didn’t hear the beating of footsteps running up to him.

“Michael!”

He turned, his confused frown melting into a grin as Lucifer raced up towards him, tie streaming back before him. He slowed down just before reaching him, breathless, cheeks reddened.

“I saw you up ahead,” Lucifer explained between pants, near enough bent double as he caught his breath. “You live near me, right? Thought I’d catch up with you.”

“Yeah,” Michael said, trying not to let his smile look too fond. “Just a block away.”

Lucifer straightened up slowly, breathing slowed to almost-normal. They began walking the way people did when they walked with friends- slowly, so they could spend more time together.

“Why were you still in school so late?” Michael asked, looking to Lucifer. He was just half an inch shorter, but it allowed Michael to see that he didn’t use product in his hair. He snorted quietly at the image of Lucifer running his hands throughout his hair constantly to maintain his effortless-looking tousled hair.

“Had to find my history teacher, give her my essay.” Lucifer sniffed loudly. “You smell like you were smoking.”

“I do?” Michael said, pausing to open his bag. He rummaged through it frantically, looking for the bottle of cologne he usually kept nestled between his pencase and his water. “Shit- my dad’s home, I don’t have my cologne… he’s going to kill me if he smells it.”

“Relax, dude,” Lucifer said, watching him. “My parents don’t get home until, like, nine. You can borrow some of mine.”

Michael breathed a sigh of relief, and they carried on walking at their snail pace.

“Did you need a fake ID to get the cigarettes or somethin’?” Lucifer asked. Michael shook his head.

“Nah. I turned eighteen late September- I can use my own.”

“Lucky. I’ve got a few months to go.”

“You smoke?”

“Whenever I can get my hands on cigarettes.”

Michael wondered whether he should offer to buy them for him, but it seemed… out of place. He settled for the comfortable silence they fell into.

He waited in the hallway as Lucifer went upstairs, dumping his bag by the door. Lucifer handed him the cologne, and then grabbed his wrist, dragging him into the kitchen. Michael swallowed, looking down at Lucifer’s hand curled around his wrist.

“Coke?” he asked, releasing Michael to open the fridge. Michael set the cologne on the counter.

“Sure.”

Lucifer took two cherry cokes out of the fridge, leading him outside. Michael sat down on the floor, his back against the brick wall of the house. Lucifer sat opposite him,

_(just out of reach)_

his legs crossed. He rolled the cherry coke can towards him, and Michael cracked it open. He took the cigarette pack, slightly crumpled, and held it out towards him. Lucifer just nodded, so he lit the cigarette for him and passed it over.

“Would your parents care if they smell it?” Michael asked, blowing smoke away from Lucifer’s face.

“Yeah,” Lucifer said casually. “They won’t smell it though, so don’t worry.”

Michael nodded. It was still warm, despite the sun beginning to set in the sky behind Lucifer. He took a long drag from the cigarette, trying not to stare at how the light gave Lucifer a golden crown, each hair on his head alight.

“This feels faintly illegal,” Michael murmured.

“Laws are irrelevant,” Lucifer casually claimed, seeming nonplussed as he sipped at his cherry coke and smoked his- no, Michael’s- cigarette.

“Some of them are kinda needed,” he pointed out. “You know. Common law. No murder, stuff like that.”

“Sure, sure. But some of them _are_ useless. I mean, think about it. Gay sex is illegal here, right?”

Michael’s mouth dried. He opened it, and then closed it, and then opened it again. “I-I…”

“You cross the border to Colorado, or Nebraska, and it’s legal. You go to Illinois and it’s legal- has been for over thirty years. You go to Kentucky, or Nevada, and it’s been legal for two years.”

“You go to Ireland,” Michael said, suddenly regaining the ability to speak.

“Huh?”

“Ireland. It became legal there last year.”

Lucifer blinked a few times. His face broke into a smile. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. My dad-” Michael broke himself off, bringing the cigarette up to his mouth again. Lucifer didn’t need to know about the angry muttering, or the smashing of the dinner plates when it first came through on the news.

Lucifer was still smiling to himself, the cigarette burning up in his hands. Michael wetted his lips nervously.

“Are you…?”

Lucifer’s head turned to Michael sharply. Lucifer was the one who was lost for words this time, his mouth opening, eyes blinking. A beat passed. Then another.

Lucifer shook his head too many beats later. “No. No, I’m not. Are you?”

Michael shook his head quickly. “No. Course not.”

Lucifer nodded once, taking a last drag from the cigarette. He pushed the cigarette butt down the space between the decks. Michael stubbed his out before doing the same.

He followed Lucifer up the stairs without questioning, looking around his room once before sitting on the floor.

He watched him pick out a record, sitting silently as he put it on.

Lucifer lay back spread-eagled on the floor. Michael could run a hand through his hair if he wanted, he was that close. The music started, and Michael looked up at the record player in surprise. He’d expected grunge, or rock, or… anything other than the soft violins that played. He met Lucifer’s eyes.

“You watched _The Raging Bull_?”

“No. Should I?”

“No, dude. It’s boring. But this is the music at the start- _Cavalleria rusticana- intermezzo._ ”

Lucifer closed his eyes, but Michael kept his open. Lucifer could have been asleep, his face relaxed, fingers laced together on his stomach. Michael moved his hands slowly, resting them on either side of his face. He couldn’t help it- Lucifer was magnetic, and he felt electric, and Michael needed to touch him.

Lucifer said nothing. He didn’t push Michael’s hands away, which was surely a good sign. Maybe it was Michael’s imagination, but it felt like he tilted his head slightly, leaning into Michael’s hand. As the music swelled, something in Michael did, too.

“Luce?”

Lucifer’s eyes opened. He stared up at Michael wordlessly.

Neither of them spoke. Michael could feel his heart slowing as the music died down.

“This… that song was nice. Really nice.”

Lucifer didn’t say anything. He just looked back up at him. He sat up slowly, turning around until they were facing each other. His lips parted, brow furrowing slightly. Michael felt his cheeks heat, and he could have sworn Lucifer was leaning in… that he’d continue leaning in… that now, any second now-

“You said your dad’s home, right?”

He was thrown back to reality mercilessly. “Yeah.”

He followed Lucifer back downstairs, and was pulled back before he could reach for the door. He waited patiently as Lucifer left for the kitchen, before coming back with the cologne in his hand.

“Did you forget the whole reason you came?” he asked teasingly, and sprayed Michael’s neck twice, before dusting the front of his shirt and tie with it. He opened the door for him, passing his bag up.

“See you tomorrow, Michael!”

Michael waved, pulling his bag onto his shoulders as he left.

 

*

He didn’t see him around school much on Thursday or Friday. Zachariah was back in school, and just as shocked as Balthazar was that Michael didn’t mind Lucifer’s company. He could find neither an excuse nor the courage to slip off and find him during the lunchtimes, and didn’t see him walking home, either.

It was strange. Conversations with Balthazar and Zach seemed… emptier. More could be said when he was sat on Lucifer’s floor with soft music playing and Lucifer’s face cupped in his hands than in an hour talking with Zach and Balthazar. He wasn’t sure what had happened to make him feel that way, but he did.

He stayed up on Friday evening, as he usually did. He liked working until well into Saturday morning- it let him sleep through most of Saturday, and his dad would leave at three in the afternoon to help at the church. He got his homework done for the weekend too, so it was a win all around.

It meant he was wide awake when what sounded like hail began hitting his window around midnight. He parted the curtains, pressing his face to the window to see out.

He straightened up immediately when he saw who it was. He grabbed his jacket, switching his light off as he left his room. Sneaking down the stairs was easy enough- opening the door as quietly as he could was the difficult part. He opened it slowly, deciding to let fate choose whether a thief would try getting into the house.

They walked in silence away from the house, out of the neighbourhood and into the woods nearby. It was too risky sitting in the street- anyone could hear them.

“You go to church, right?” Lucifer asked. They found a tree that had fallen over, and scrambled up to sit on it.

“Yeah. My dad’s pretty heavy on religion.”

“You believe in it?”

Michael nodded slowly, looking down at his feet. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Do you like your dad?”

He shook his head. He didn’t need to put a whole lot of thought into that one. “No. No, I don’t.”

“Don’t worry,” Lucifer said, nudging Michael’s foot with his own. “I don’t like mine much, either.”

They sat quietly for a few moments.

“We should go to Paris,” Michael said softly. Lucifer sighed.

“We should. See the Louvre.”

“The Arc de Triomphe.”

“Versailles. The Hall of Mirrors is meant to be amazing.”

“Notre Dame.”

Lucifer looked at him, face soft and thoughtful. “Let’s go now. Tonight.”

Michael smiled at him. “Right now?”

“Right now.”

“Alright.”

“I’m serious,” Lucifer said, and Michael laughed. “Aren’t you serious?”

“Oh, yeah. How would we get to the airport?”

“Walk.”

“And how would we pay for a ticket?”

“We wouldn’t. We’d steal a plane.”

Michael laughed. He didn’t realise how far he was leaning back until he fell onto the floor of the woods, the leaves breaking his fall. He carried on laughing.

“Michael?” Lucifer joined him on the floor, face hovering above his own. Michael could just about see his slightly confused smile in the dark. “You alright, Michael?”

Michael’s laughter took a while to die down. He looked up at him, lips parted with the corners turned upwards.

“You’re the only one that calls me Michael,” he said. “Everyone else calls me Mike, or Mikey, or Mickey. You’re the only one who calls me Michael.”

“Does that make me special?” Lucifer asked, smiling down at him.

“Very.”

A beat passed. And then another. Then Lucifer leaned down, pressing his lips to Michael’s. Michael pulled him closer, as close as they could get without Lucifer falling on top of him. He kissed him back, and it felt more natural than kissing anyone else ever could. The world around them was silent, and Michael laced his fingers with Lucifer’s.

He went to sleep with a fuzzy head that night, his heart still thumping madly in his chest. He could still feel Lucifer’s lips on his own, still feel his hair beneath his fingertips. He never wanted to forget that feeling.

Sleep came easy to him that night- silent, dreamless, and warm.


	3. Those Images

_I never bade you go_

_To Moscow or to Rome._

_Renounce that drudgery,_

_Call the Muses home._

 

_*_

 

Michael had always been a quick learner. His father had told him stories of how quickly he’d learned to write, needing to trace the outline of letters only a few times before he could write them without assistance, pencil gripped firmly in his hand. His father taught him cursive in two days, Michael’s pencil tracing the loops with fair ease.

It was in a similar way he learned to trace the lines of Lucifer’s stomach, ribs, hips, cheekbones, jaw, neck. The body beneath his fingers became quickly familiar, and it wasn’t long before Michael felt he could trace the shape of Lucifer’s lips in his dreams, could write a thousand words on the way his breath trembled when Michael pulled his fingers through his hair, his warm lips on Lucifer’s cool ones.

He learned the path into Lucifer’s room in the dead of night quickly, too. Climb the pipe, one leg wrapped around it, the other pushing off the wall perpendicular to it until he could hook a leg around the balcony of Luce’s room. Then Lucifer would come out, always with perfect timing, hair soft from being freshly washed. He’d pull Michael into his room, leading him to the bed, his pale hands pushing the jacket off Michael’s shoulders.

It wasn’t all physical. Sometimes they’d just lay there speaking softly, Lucifer’s head on Michael’s chest. Michael told him about his father, about his worries- school, college, home, everything. Lucifer told him all his run-away plans from when he’d been younger. New York, Canada, Paris, Pisa, Bel Air.

“You’d hate Bel Air,” Michael pointed out one night while Lucifer traced circles on his wrist. “California’s so hot.”

“I just thought it sounded pretty,” Lucifer had said, shrugging slightly.

“You’d need to go somewhere cooler,” Michael said. “Up north. Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts. Somewhere like that.”

Lucifer hadn’t replied. He’d just kissed his wrist.

School had changed, much to the displeasure of Zach and Balthazar. Lucifer spent lunchtimes with them now, sitting as close to Michael as he dared. The hour was filled with as many accidental touches as they could fit in without arousing suspicion. Lucifer waited by the school gates as Michael smoked with Zach and Balthazar behind the bleachers, so they could walk home together, ambling along the streets, finding any excuse to somehow delay their walk.

“You said you weren’t going to be his friend,” Balthazar said between chattering teeth, bouncing up and down to stay warm in the early March chill.

“He needs friends,” Michael said simply, drawing in a drag. “He needs a good influence in his life.”

“Yeah, you sure look like a good influence,” Balthazar snorted. He nudged Zachariah with his shoulder. “Tell him.”

“We don’t like him much.”

“He knows that already. Tell him something else.”

“Look, you don’t have to be friends with him,” Michael said hotly. “Just be civil.”

“Oh, you two are civil alright,” Balthazar said darkly. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and lit up another in one fluid, graceful move. “You two fucking?”

Michael inhaled too quickly. While he choked and spluttered, Balthazar just stood with one eyebrow raised.

“That’s not funny,” Zach said. His cigarette was barely touched, burning away slowly between his fingers.

“Oh, I know it’s not. Come on, Mickey,” Balthazar said. The blood drained from Michael’s face as he realised this wouldn’t be dropped. “He’s not a bad-looking lad. You start tutoring him and suddenly he’s your best friend?”

“He’s good company,” Michael said weakly.

“He barely says a word at lunch. Though I imagine that make it all the more rewarding when he-”

“Shut _up_ ,” Michael said, shoving his shoulder. Balthazar’s eyes narrowed.

“Come off it. We wouldn’t judge, would we Zach?”

Zachariah snorted, flicking his cigarette to the ground. “Judge? Nah,” he said. “Beat the shit out of you? Well.” He laughed to himself.

Michael saw Balthazar’s eyes widen slightly. Their eyes met briefly before flickering away.

“I’m kidding,” Balth said after a stilted silence. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Michael echoed. Balthazar gave a small, deep nod.

“Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Zachariah said with a laugh, shoving Michael slightly. “Look at him. Girls will be clamouring over each other to get a piece of him in college.”

A smile touched Balthazar’s lips at that, but quickly left as Michael’s face remained stony.

“You tutoring him today?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Balthazar nodded, throwing his second cigarette to the floor. “Come on, then. Don’t leave him waiting all day.”

They walked in silence together to the gates. “Hey,” Lucifer said as they approached. Only Zach replied.

To Michael’s surprise, Balthazar turned in their direction as they walked out the gate.

“My mom’s picking me up,” he called to a confused Zach. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And so the silence continued as they walked in a line, Lucifer shooting him a look every so often. Michael waited until Zachariah was definitely out of earshot before coming to a complete stop.

“Where’s your mom’s car?” he asked flatly. Lucifer stopped too, watching the two of them curiously.

“She’s not picking me up, I just…” he craned his neck, squinting in the direction Zach had walked in before turning back. “Look, mate, I didn’t know he’d…”

“It’s fine,” Michael said.

“No, it’s not.” Balthazar stole a glance at Lucifer before looking back. “I shouldn’t have pushed-”

“You shouldn’t have,” Michael agreed. “But it’s fine. And we’re not, for the record.”

Balthazar looked alarmed. “We’re not- who- _oh,_ ” he said, looking pointedly at Lucifer. “I don’t care if you are. Now I’ve got to run. See you, Mickey. Lucifer.” He patted Lucifer’s shoulder before he began to run, actually run, in an oddly elegant manner.

“What was that about?” Lucifer asked.

Michael shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and they left it at that.

His father was home as he walked through the door two hours later. He barely looked up from his paper as Michael walked into the kitchen.

“Tutoring that Connolly kid again?”

“Yes.”

“Does he have a sister?”

“No.”

His father made a small noise. “So where did those marks on your neck come from then?”

For the second time that day, the floor left Michael’s feet. His heart dropped down to his stomach, but his hands were remarkably steady as he emptied the contents of a soup tin into a bowl.

“His neighbour. Lucy Hardwell.” He silently apologised to Lucy Hardwell, who he’d met once at a Church gathering.

“What, was she out on the porch or something?”

 _It’s March,_ Michael reminded himself. _It’s freezing outside. You need to stop being so careless._

“She invited me inside for a cup of coffee.”

“Is she pretty?”

Lucy had hazel eyes and chestnut hair that hung nearly to her waist. She was one of the prettiest girls he knew. The fact he couldn’t talk about Lucifer instead made him want to howl with rage.

“Very.”

His father didn’t respond. Michael watched his soup go round in the microwave, and then ate it in silence.

He left the house in the dead of night, jacket zipped up against the cold. He’d tell Lucifer about it. About all of it. Tomorrow he wouldn’t feel sick when he saw Zachariah- he’d just be another inside joke. “ _Beat the shit out of you?”_ Lucifer would say, pressing a kiss to his jawline. “ _How tall is he? Five foot three? You could beat him five times over.”_

But Lucifer’s light wasn’t on. Still, he climbed his way up, struggling onto the balcony.

“Luce?” he called softly, rapping on the dark window. “Are you there?”

Nothing.

“Are you mad?”

Silence.

He waited in the cold, shivering, for twenty minutes. Then he climbed back down.

*

He didn’t see him at break. He left his literature class to pass by history, where he knew Lucifer should be sitting. But there was just an empty chair by the window, the lesson continuing as though nothing was amiss.

“Lucifer not in today?” Zachariah asked at lunch. Michael didn’t eat, staring at the table and avoiding Balthazar’s guilty gaze.

“I guess not.”

He wasn’t in the next day, or the next. No contact over the weekend. Michael knocked at his house on Saturday evening.

No one answered.

No one said a word about it. No one seemed concerned. No one but Balthazar seemed to notice, shooting him sympathetic looks as another lunch went by without Lucifer turning up. It wasn’t until he knocked at his house again, slipping out of his own house to make his way there. A thin man answered the door, blinking at him.

“I’m Michael Moran,” Michael said, offering his hand for fear the man would shut the door. “I’m meant to be tutoring your son.”

“Lucifer,” the man said faintly.

“Yes. Is he okay?”

The man blinked at him again, pushing his glasses up his nose while Michael waited.

“We don’t know.”

Michael’s mouth fell open slightly. “I… what?”

“The police have been informed,” the man said. Michael swallowed nervously. Police? Informed of what? Surely… surely not about them.

“We were thinking of putting a page in the newspaper,” the man continued. Michael’s heart hammered. “But then he’s always been careful. He needs to come back on his own terms. And anyway, he’s practically an adult.”

“What?” Michael said desperately, taking a step forward. “Where is he?”

The man looked at him- _really_ looked at him- for the first time.

“We don’t know. The note didn’t say.”

“Note?”

“Note,” the man agreed. “He’s ran away. We’d thought he’d grown out of it by now.”

“Ran away?” Michael repeated, eyes widening. “But- to where?”

“Don’t you think he’d be here if I knew?” the man said. “I told you, the police have been informed. It’s nice that you’re concerned, kid, but there’s not much else to do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m quite busy.”

He shut the door, leaving Michael shell-shocked on the porch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe how long it's been! School's been ridiculous- but this will get written. It will just take some time. I have plans for a series of sorts that I'm looking forward to doing concerning Michael and Lucifer- if there's a particular era you'd want to see them in, comment what that is! I want the series to be short or longish stories of them in different eras, always finding a way to end up together.


	4. The White Birds

_I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!_

_We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;_

_And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,_

_Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die._

*

 

Michael began driving an awful lot. He took his dad’s car, stealing his keys in the dead of night and driving until he was on auto-pilot mode, mind blank, eyes staring straight ahead, hands loosely holding the wheel. Sometimes he’d park on the side of the freeway (there was no real danger in doing so- not many people were there at two in the morning) and he’d scream into the night. Balthazar and Zach said nothing as he turned up to school day after day with tired eyes and a sore throat. When his dad grudgingly gave him the money for the driving lessons he’d wanted since his sixteenth birthday, he astonished the instructor and passed the test with flying colours. His dad was so shocked he added Michael to his insurance when he heard.

School was hell- not that he’d expected anything else. He too tired from his nights on the freeway to concentrate on schoolwork- too tired to do anything but stare at doors and into the distance, waiting for Lucifer to come bursting through the door, hair a little wild and tie askew (why he’d be wearing the school tie in this scenario, Michael didn’t know), ignoring everyone else and running into Michael’s open arms. Michael swore silently to himself that he would kiss him, if that scenario became a reality; kiss him in front of everyone, and damn the consequences. He told himself he was done hiding. If Lucifer came back, he wouldn’t hide.

Of course, those thoughts quietened down a bit when his father muttered poisonously during a rerun of the episode _Undercurrents_ of the show _Hotel_ , and when Zachariah filled the silence one lunch with a hateful retelling of a story from the sister school, about a girl walking in on two others in an empty classroom. Balthazar hadn’t said a word during the story. Michael hadn’t been able to tune out Zachariah’s slur-laden words, a sick feeling in his stomach. He knew one of the girls he was talking about. They’d met at a party. He saw her walking home from school later that week, her chin held high, the purple ring around her eye noticeable from across the street. She had her jaw set, a pink triangle badge glinting proudly from her dark blazer. Michael stopped in his tracks, staring at her. When they made eye contact, he lifted his fist slowly, a gesture of solidarity he’d only seen on television. She looked a touch startled but slowed her pace slightly and gave him a nod and a hint of a smile. He thought about the small interaction for weeks.

He looked out for her on his way home after that. He saw her again in April, hand confidently holding another girl’s who had a matching triangle on her blazer. The one he knew made eye contact with him and gave him a small wave that he returned. He stared at the floor as he walked the rest of the way, replaying it in his mind with such concentration that he nearly walked past Lucifer’s house without noticing someone was sitting on the porch.

“Michael?”

Michael’s neck snapped up. His mouth opened stupidly.

“Mrs Connolly,” he said faintly.

He’d met her a few times in his tutoring of Lucifer. She’d nearly walked in on them in the middle of a heavy kissing session. Lucifer had leapt up from Michael’s lap and into the chair next to him when the front door opened, both of them fumbling with their shirt buttons hastily.

“ _Lucifer,_ ” she’d said when she’d entered the room, giving Michael a quick-but-warm smile before turning to Lucifer. “What have I told you about flinging your blazer by the front door?”

She was a pretty, kind-eyed woman, with Lucifer’s blond hair that faded to honey at the temples. She was sat on the porch in a blue linen dress, her feet bare. She patted the wood next to her, and Michael sat down. She poured him a glass of rose lemonade from the frosted jug beside her.

“Have you heard from him?” Michael asked eagerly as he accepted the glass, feeling awake for the first time in weeks.

She gave a soft laugh. “I was going to ask you the same question.”

He felt the short-lived hope die.

She sighed, pushing some of her hair behind her ear. “Lucifer… he was fond of you. I could tell. I thought if there was anyone he’d tell…” She trailed off, and Michael stared at the glass. He didn’t want to taste it. He knew it would remind him of Lucifer.

“I was fond of him, too,” Michael said, feeling his heart hammering in his chest. He felt like she would turn to him, her pretty features twisting to express disgust as she heard the truth beneath his words.

She just stayed staring at her feet.

“If he did get in contact with me, Mrs Connolly, you would be the first one I’d go to.” He wasn’t quite sure how true that really was. Still, it sounded like something a mother would need to hear.

“Oh, that wasn’t my main worry,” she said, sounding surprised. “I’d just like to know that he’s safe.”

Michael’s mouth fell open in surprise. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he took a sip of the lemonade before he could stop himself.

“It sounds like a lie, I know,” she said. “But it’s not. He would have been eighteen next week. A child running away is one thing. An adult…” she trailed off, shaking her head. She turned to look at him, pale eyes studying his face. Michael swallowed nervously. To his surprise, she gave him a soft smile.

“Look after yourself, sweetie,” she said, standing. “You look tired. Just leave your glass there once you’re done.”

She closed the door quietly. Michael blinked, staring at the spot she’d just been sat in. There was something about their conversation that made him uneasy. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, so he drained the rest of the lemonade and walked home quickly, refusing dinner under the guise of not being hungry, when in reality he wanted to retain the taste of the rose lemonade for as long as he could.

It was during his nightly prayers- what with it being a Tuesday, he was reflecting on the Sorrowful Mysteries with his rosary between his fingers- that he realised what it was that made him uneasy. She’d used the past tense when referring to Lucifer. And he had too.

He threw the rosary across the room.

*

Time moved in a blur. Home, school, home, church, school, home. All of it was moving colours and vague sounds. Nothing was real anymore- nothing except the Lucifer that visited his dreams, a faceless, voiceless being of light who Michael clung to, knowing he would disappear when he woke up.

 _I’m forgetting him,_ he wanted to shout at the Connolly house each time he passed it. _I’m forgetting his voice, his face is a blur- call the fucking police, do_ something _to bring him back._

“You’re wasting away,” Zachariah informed him publicly one day as Michael once again sat without food at lunch.

“Look, man, if you need me to lend you money for lunch or whatever, just say the word,” Balthazar said more privately in their daily smoking ritual- sans Zachariah, who was off sick that day. He'd laced his fingers around Michael's wrist. “I haven’t seen you eat in weeks.”

Michael didn’t respond to either of their concerns. He stared off into middle-distance, trying to figure out how he could be both detached from reality and unable to escape it.

It wasn’t until lunch, two weeks after spring break (which Michael had spent mostly staring at walls and desperately catching up with the schoolwork he’d been too zoned out to do) that he really felt alive.

Two guys in junior year were sat behind them in the cafeteria, and Michael’s ear caught Lucifer’s name.

“-that Lucifer guy. Gone for over a month now.”

“Maybe he’s dead,” the other said casually. Both Balthazar and Zachariah looked up at Michael worriedly. They had been listening, too.

“Maybe,” the other said. Zachariah shuffled uncomfortably, opening his mouth- to say what, Michael didn’t know, because the guy continued talking. “Probably for the best. Heard he was a fag.”

Michael was out of his seat before he realised it, hand on the back of the guy who was talking’s neck, shoving it down into the table, hard.

His friend leapt up with a roar. Michael’s fist was in his face before he could move, and he relished the pain it brought.

The first guy stood up as his friend lurched back, both of them unsteady on their feet. Before Michael could do much the guy grabbed him and brought him down as he brought his knee up hard into Michael’s stomach. The guy shoved him, and Michael fell.

“Stop!” Zachariah cried as the guy began kicking Michael in the stomach, the face, anywhere he could reach. Michael would have vomited if there had been anything to vomit up.

It wasn’t Zachariah’s pitiful attempt at peace-making that stopped him, though. It was Balthazar, who threw himself at him in something like a rugby tackle, and Michael turned his bruised eyes to watch with surprise as Balthazar’s elegant hands balled into fists, punching the guy’s face over and over, his own scrunched in anger, until a teacher dragged him off.

The three of them were sent to be roared at by the Vice Principal, who didn’t care why the fight had started. The fourth one, who had stayed down after his one punch, wasn’t called in.

None of them got punishments, somehow. Just severe warnings and requests to see the school nurse refused. Michael’s ribs seemed to ache more when this was shouted at them.

Balthazar and the junior were sent back to class when the bell went. A note which had arrived ten minutes into the Vice Principal’s shouting was flung at Michael. It told him to go to Mr Brandis’ office.

A glass of water was set out for him when he got there. Mr Brandis shut the door, sitting on the desk in the over-familiar way teachers sometimes sat.

“Now,” Mr Brandis began. “I’ve been informed this was something to do with Mr Connolly’s disappearance.”

Michael said nothing. He felt sick. His face throbbed. He didn’t want to be here.

“Don’t worry,” Mr Brandis said, and Michael looked up in surprise. “I’ve talked with the parents. We’ve came to an understanding about the situation.”

Michael looked away.

“You’ve done well, Michael,” he said in a soft voice. “Kept your grades up. We’re all proud of you. I know you two were close.”

He still said nothing.

A hand came down, gripping his shoulder.

“We all make mistakes sometimes, Moran. There’s nothing you have to worry about.”

Michael stared at the hand. He stood up, walking quickly to the door.

“Thank you for your understanding, sir,” he said quickly, and left without asking if he could.

One more month, he thought as he walked, slamming his fists into lockers as he walked to class. One more month until classes were done, exams finished, his diploma collected. He could do it.

And he did. It was one more month of exhaustion, one more month of hearing whispers in the corridors, one more month of feeling like a part of him was missing. But he did it. He collected his diploma- a near-perfect GPA, Lucifer would have been proud- and sat down again.

He was dragged to a party that night. Zachariah got the three of them beer in red solo cups, handing them over before dancing off with his own, hooting loudly.

Balthazar snorted. “He’s going to be one of them, I see,” he said as they watched him go.

Michael drank bad beer. He stood outside with the stoners for a while, accepting as one of them offered him their joint. He danced with three different girls inside. He walked in on someone doing a line in the dining room, her eyes wide with surprise, the line neatly arranged in a wave on the table.

The house was big, packed with people from his own school, the sister school, the public schools around the district. He didn’t know most of the people there. He didn’t see Balthazar for a while, until he appeared next to him, taking his cup out his hands and swapping ditching the beer in a plant pot, filling it with wine instead. His lips were stained with red, eyes wide and bright, and when he pulled Michael upstairs, Michael didn’t protest.

He pulled him into a dark office upstairs, locking the door behind him. Michael sat down on the hard little sofa near the desk, drunk and high enough to drink the wine quickly without flinching.

Balthazar sat next to him, closer than was required. He put a hand on his thigh. Michael wasn’t surprised by the boldness.

“I know you miss him,” Balthazar said quietly. They silence sat for a while, and then Balthazar was sitting closer to him, hand moving up to his hip, across his stomach, along the sides of his waist, so cautiously and carefully that Michael knew this had been a long time coming for him.

“But I miss you,” he whispered, hand on the side of his neck. “And- and you’re still here. Isn’t that sadder?”

He couldn’t think of a response to that. He didn’t need to. Balthazar’s wine-stained lips were on his, his hands pushing him down. Michael let him, hands curling in his hair. He hadn’t been kissed in months.

Balthazar’s lips moved down his jaw, his neck, stomach. Michael’s throat arched to the ceiling as he heard his belt being undone. The usual chorus in his mind, shouting ‘ _Lucifer! Lucifer! Lucifer!_ ’ had been muffled by drink but was still there. In the dark, with his light hair, he could maybe pretend-

Except he couldn’t. He moved away, making a small noise Balthazar seemed to understand. Michael could see his burning cheeks, even in the dark.

“I’m- Mike- please don’t-” Balthazar managed as Michael stood up, fastening his belt. He leant down, pressing a gentle kiss into his hair.

“I won’t,” he murmured, understanding what he was trying to stutter out. “Don’t worry.”

He walked home, sobering quickly. He didn’t hesitate when he reached Lucifer’s house. He was on the balcony in an instant, pressing his fingers into the gaps in the window, opening it carefully.

He listened out for snoring before flipping on the light. He stood in the still room. There was a film of dust on everything.

He lay in the bed. He traced shapes on the wall. He flipped through the collection of records. He took out the one they had listened to on that day in February- cherry cokes and cigarettes, Lucifer looking like a dream- and pressed the sleeve to his lips, tears rolling down his cheeks.

A slip of paper fell out. CRSTYL LKE, VT was written on it in big letters. He blinked.

He jumped up, flinging open the wardrobe and fishing out the diary he knew Lucifer kept hidden there, wrapped up in an ugly Christmas sweater.

He flipped through it. Lucifer either wrote long passages, records of his train of thought, or he wrote in a bad code. MCHL featured a lot in the more recent entries. So did LVE, and often together, with a shy heart near the MCHLs.

The last entry was the same as the sheet. CRSTYL LKE, VT, and an awful drawing of a stickman lying beside a blue squiggle. Michael stared.

VT.

VT.

_Vermont._

He was up, stuffing the jumper back into the wardrobe, clearing away the traces of his presence. He kept the diary under his arm as he climbed back down, running home under cover of darkness.

His dad was still awake, glass of whiskey in hand, eyes red. He said nothing as Michael went upstairs, returning five minutes later with a bag on his shoulders.

“I’m leaving,” Michael informed him.

Nothing.

“And I’m taking the car.”

Nothing, still. He wondered if he had even heard him. Michael took the keys from the shelf, the party a million years away.

“Don’t come looking for me.”

His dad snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He had heard him, then. He just didn’t care.

It took him three days to reach Vermont. He checked into a hotel near Hartford, holding out Lucifer's slip of paper with a hopeful smile. The woman behind the counter raised an eyebrow.

“Crystal Lake?”

He checked out as early as they allowed the next morning, unable to sleep.

It took him an hour to get to Crystal Lake, speeding along the roads. His heart felt like it was bruising his ribs when he arrived.

He wandered around the edge of the lake, the weak Vermont sunshine warming his back. His hands were in his pockets, his hair unbrushed, and when he saw a boy sitting on a bench, blond head bent over a book, his mouth widened in a smile.

He stood over him, saying nothing. The boy looked up, and every hour he’d spent sobbing, every sleepless night melted away.

“Michael,” he said, squinting in the sun. He stood, smoothing Michael’s jacket, combing through his hair with his fingers.

“Lucifer.”

“You took your time,” Lucifer said, and Michael laughed. It felt like he hadn’t laughed in months.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he replied. Lucifer pulled him in for a kiss, his arms wrapping around his neck. Michael kissed him back, hands around his waist, holding him close and breathing in the smell of his skin. He was here. Here, in Michael’s arms, with his hands moving to hold his hair as tightly and possessively as Michael was holding onto his waist, and all that had been wrong with the world seemed to be fixed.


	5. The Moods

_Time drops in decay_

_Like a candle burnt out,_

_And the mountains and the woods_

_Have their day, have their day;_

_What one in the rout_

_Of the fire-born moods_

_Has fallen away?_

 

*

 

The weeks melted by, and Vermont was like a dream. Lucifer would sit in the passenger seat as Michael drove. Sometimes he would bring a tape out of his pocket and put it in, singing along with his feet up on the dashboard, the clear Vermont skies streaked with red, laced with gold, as day gave way to night.

His singing stayed with Michael throughout the night, long after Lucifer had fallen asleep in his arms. _“I wanna drive you down to the other side of town, where paradise ain’t so crowded and there’ll be action going down…”_ His clear choir-boy voice not straining, rising above Springsteen's delicately.

They drove from place to place, town to town. It was like nowhere Michael had ever been, mainly because he had never been to New England. Lucifer led him through a thicket of trees in the late afternoon of the fourth of July- through maple, ash, yew, willow- into a lavender meadow. The grass was a startlingly fresh green and the smell of the lavender was heavy. They could hear no fireworks as they lay there, kissing and talking as the night fell around them.

They stayed in a motel every so often, but their base was a hotel in Barton. Lucifer had saved for years, apparently- enough money to have a suite booked right through to September.

“This is my brother,” he said to the curious receptionist, his grin a mile wide. Michael’s cheeks had flushed a deep red, darkening further when Lucifer hopped on his back, legs wrapped around his waist and arms around his neck. “Giddy-up, Michael!” he’d said, and Michael had left as quickly as he could. Lucifer stayed on his back, handing him the keys from his pocket awkwardly.

Lucifer was remarkably slight, and shorter than Michael- albeit by a fraction of an inch, but even so. Michael had been able to carry him with ease back in Kansas, giving him a piggyback home once when Lucifer had complained he was tired, and lifting him into bed more than a few times. All the meals spent staring listlessly into space instead of eating had taken its toll. Lucifer had noticed quickly, fingers tracing his more prominent hipbones thoughtfully on their first night, spent in the nearest motel they could find next to Crystal Lake. As Michael collapsed on the bed with Lucifer on his back, breathing laboured, Lucifer said nothing. Michael evened his breathing, embarrassed, and Lucifer began pressing soft kisses into his neck.

He made sure Michael ate regularly after that, pushing his leftovers towards him in restaurants. A month later he jumped at Michael in excitement at a record shop in Burlington having the new record he was looking for. Michael caught him easily, arms wrapping around him as he spun him around.

Lucifer had found a record player for twenty dollars. They set it up that evening, sitting in pious silence as they listened.

“Look,” Lucifer said a few songs in. He rummaged through the pile of books and papers by his side of the bed, pulling out a magazine cut-out. Michael took it.

“Pretty, isn’t he?” Lucifer asked, head on his shoulder.

“I can think of prettier,” Michael said, hand coming up to run down Lucifer’s cheek. The singer’s voice wasn’t unlike Lucifer’s, Michael thought.

Lucifer wouldn’t stop singing that album after that. They went to Hampton beach one hot day, taking a lunch of cherries, peaches, and in a rather stupid move, wine. Lucifer drank some of it on the long drive there. They split most of the rest in the parking lot before claiming a spot on the crowded beach. Lucifer began singing one of the songs from his new record at some point in the hot day, his wine-and-cherry-juice stained lips near Michael’s cheek.

 _“So I’ll wait for you, and I’ll burn,”_ Lucifer sang as Michael kept one hand tangled in his sandy hair. Neither of them had cut their hair for a while. Michael’s was getting to the length where gel was more of a requirement than a stylistic choice. He’d brought scissors to them one day before Lucifer had vehemently protested.

“The skater look is all the rage in Cali!” he’d cried. Michael's brow had furrowed in confusion before he laughed, putting down the scissors and running his hands through it a few times in the hotel mirror. Their usual evening routine (reading separately in bed, or Lucifer reading poetry aloud, or Michael reading poetry silently while Lucifer sang quietly) was replaced by Lucifer making small braids in Michael’s hair, his blue eyes narrowed in concentration.

_“Will I ever see your sweet return?”_

They kissed for the first time in public that day- in _public_ public. He knew they would have received looks of disgust, but for once, my god, he really did not care. They were kissing in the sand, and instead of fear Michael felt joy, and instead of an inner monologue consisting of nothing but worry, he heard bells ringing out ‘ _I love you, I love you, I love you,’_ as Lucifer’s mouth moved sloppily against his own, his thumb stroking Michael’s cheek like he was made out of the most delicate glass.

Three ice-creams and one large portion of seafood and fries later they were driving back home, Lucifer applying cocoa butter to his reddening arms. The drive was over three hours, another hour added by the traffic, yet another hour added by Michael taking a wrong turn. It was dark as they crossed the state border, and nearly midnight as they neared their hotel. Michael’s skin still felt warm from the day in the sun. He heard Lucifer singing Hallelujah quietly to himself as they got nearer. This was what life was meant to be like, Michael thought that night, Lucifer sleeping next to him. It was the sun, cherries, the sky so bright and the sea so blue he couldn’t see where one began and the other ended. It was hearing Lucifer singing Jeff Buckley songs, his warm limbs and cool lips against his own. It was an endless summer.

It lasted longer than a fleeting wish, but wasn’t as solid as a permanent reality. It was more than that. That summer, that perfect, perfect summer, perfectly, tragically finite, remained suspended in that untouchable place between fluidity and solidity. Somewhere beyond just the echoes of his memory Michael was eternally living it, always, kissing Lucifer’s wine-stained lips in the heat until the world’s last grain of sand fell through the timer.

But then they checked out of the hotel three days before the beginning of September. As they drove to south Vermont, Michael remembered something he had forgot to tell Lucifer. And then it all fell apart.

He decided to be bold about it.

“Come to New York with me,” he said as they put their luggage in a motel room. Lucifer flopped onto the double bed, eyes closed, arms spread wide.

“Alright,” he said easily. “What’s in New York?”

“Columbia.”

Lucifer’s eyes flew open. They fixed on Michael.

“Columbia?” he repeated. Michael nodded.

“I got a scholarship,” he said. The words sounded strange in his mouth. He had told few people, the nights he spent forcing himself to write essays, fill out forms, and keep his grades up going without open recognition.

Lucifer was expressionless for a few beats too long. Then the corners of his mouth lifted.

“A scholarship to Columbia,” he repeated softly. “Clever boy.”

Michael sat on the bed. “Luce,” he said, not liking the almost pleading tone already creeping into his voice. “Come with me.”

The smile slipped from Lucifer’s face. He shook his head slowly.

“That’s the life I tried to escape,” Lucifer whispered. He sounded scared.

“You wouldn’t have to live that life,” Michael said quickly, fear- inexplicable fear- piercing his heart like a knife. “Just please, please come with me.”

Lucifer looked more than scared. He looked terrified. All those perfect days came crashing down.

“Don’t leave me,” Michael said, but it came out like a question. Lucifer bit his lip, eyes welling with tears.

“Lucifer,” Michael said, voice cracking.

“Don’t go,” Lucifer whispered. Michael’s mouth opened in surprise.

Then they were kissing, Lucifer’s hands twisting desperately in his hair. They didn’t even get close to having sex that night- not that Michael would want to when they were both in such a state. Lucifer left purple marks down his neck, which Michael returned. At one point Lucifer openly wept on his chest, crying like his heart was broke.

“Don’t go,” he’d repeat over and over again, holding onto Michael tightly.

He cried himself to sleep, holding Michael’s arm in his hands. There was no reading, no poetry, no singing. There was just mildew on the wall and tears drying on Michael’s face and neck.

He knew deep down why Lucifer was in such a state. He almost didn’t need to wake up the next morning to see it was true.

He wouldn’t have been quite so distressed if he didn’t think- or know- there would be immediate consequences for Michael’s unwillingness to concede.

Michael woke the next morning in an empty bed. Lucifer’s luggage was gone.

Though the time between that first day in Kansas, pointing at a textbook as Lucifer frowned, and the days in Vermont seemed to stretch for eternity, it was, Michael knew, a short amount of time to fall in love, have his heart broken, and to have the cycle repeated once more. Due to the nature of their relationship and the nature of, well, Lucifer, it came as no shock to see he had picked up once more and left him. It was no surprise at all.

He just wished his aching heart would understand that.

He looked around the room with tired eyes.

No note.

Nothing.

He fell back asleep.


	6. O Do Not Love Too Long

_Do not love too long,_

_He loved long and long,_

_And grew to be out of fashion_

_Like an old song._

_All through the years of their youth_

_Neither could have known_

_Their own thought from the other’s,_

_They were so much at one._

_But O, in a minute he changed._

 

*

Michael began his freshman year majoring in maths, practically chaining himself to his desk.

His roommate was nice. He was majoring in literature and let Michael read his many, many books. They got on pretty well, traipsing through the streets of New York together as they walked to lectures or the central library. His name was Tim. Michael had spent the first few weeks dropping calculated remarks on the different girls they’d see throughout the day- the red-haired girl who’d been sitting on the steps outside the library, the blonde girl with large brown eyes who was down the hall. He was never crude in his remarks- he was still in his Kansas mindset and wanted it to be established that he was straight, straight as a ruler, and definitely not in love with another boy who visited his dreams each night.

“Micky,” Tim said one night, reading in the dim light while Michael finished homework at his desk. He’d been going through the motions, talking about alluring the way a girl they’d passed on the street held her cigarette.

“Yeah?”

“I know you’re not straight.”

Michael froze, then spun around in his chair. Tim was smaller and thinner than him- not much of a threat, exactly. Light brown curly hair, light brown eyes, thin fingers marking his place in the book he was reading. He didn’t look like he meant to scare Michael. He didn’t look like he could scare anyone.

“Yeah?” Michael repeated, still not letting his guard down. “What makes you think that?”

Tim, to his credit, didn’t look intimidated. He gestured instead to the posters around his bed. Numerous posters of Che Guevara, both the one Michael had seen many times, and large prints of rarer ones. There was a small postcard-sized picture of a young Joseph Stalin on level with his pillow. Michael had tried not to look too shocked when Tim had put them up, chalking it up to things that would be uncommon somewhere like Kansas, but not to unusual in New York.

“Do you honestly think I’m straight?” Tim asked. “And do you really think I can’t tell that you’re not either?” His tone was light and causal. Michael’s throat was too dry for him to reply.

And then he just went back to reading his book. They never mentioned the conversation again. Michael stopped bringing up girls. Tim’s birthday was that October. Michael got him a Che Guevara shirt and a small box of cigars. Tim laughed with delight, and they shared one of them that evening.

He had other friends. There were friends on his course, some guy down the hall, a few girls he talked to in the dining hall. But something about Tim reminded him of…

Despite that, though, he didn’t try to kiss him. Tim had a boyfriend back in Seattle. He showed Michael a framed photograph of them one day.

“He looks good, right?” Tim said with a wide grin. “He’s in college over there. In the ROTC. Doing something over the term breaks pretty much all the time.”

That nugget of information turned out to be pretty advantageous to Michael, seeing as he had no reason to return to Kansas. They found a cheap place together over the winter break, spending their time shivering from the cold. Michael had a less-than-minimum wage job selling maps to tourists and giving directions, keeping some math questions under the stack of subway maps.

They celebrated New Year’s by crawling into the dirty underbelly of the city, where their IDs wouldn’t be checked, and their names wouldn’t be asked. Michael did a line off the back of Tim’s hand, letting out a loud hoot as he did so. They ended up raiding the host’s drink supply, carrying as many bottles as they could, running off before midnight.

They over-indulged again a few nights later, drinking and smoking weed in their crappy rented apartment. They went stumbling through the dark streets, Michael loudly informing the buildings and pavement and cars around that they were hell, all was hell, and Kansas had been an everlasting purgatory with a sweet taste of heaven. Tim prompted him with lines from the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost, and he hollered them down the streets. He wept loudly that night as Tim made him go to bed, weeping for the eyes and voice and smile that were already beginning to fade in memory.

He didn’t mention it the next morning. Neither did Tim, who sat reading the newspaper and drinking orange juice, an oddly comforting sight in the filthy hovel that was their temporary accommodation.

They went out on the town again a few nights later. Tim had spent over an hour on the phone with his boyfriend earlier, saying nothing about it. He took Michael back to the part of time they’d been on New Year’s. More coke, more drink, a worse hangover the next morning.

That continued into their second term. At first it would be after one of them finished a difficult paper. Then it was because they finished a piece of homework. Then when one of them took neat notes in a lecture. Then just because they wanted to.

And it became easier, Michael noticed, to stop himself from staring at every blond head he saw trying to figure out if it was who he hoped it was. It was easier to look at blue eyes without wanting them to belong to someone else. It was easier to look in the mirror without straining to see someone who wasn’t standing behind him.

Then someone kissed him on a night out- a stranger, with a mouth that tasted of cigarettes- and he was back to weeping when he tried to fall asleep, wishing it had been someone else.

Tim’s boyfriend came to surprise him at the end of the second term. Tim opened the door one day, jumped at him with a shout of delight, and left for Seattle for three weeks. Just like that.

“Just come down for the break, Mickey,” Balthazar said over the phone. “Come on. You don’t even have to stay with your old man. My mum’s fine with letting you stay here.”

Michael had remained silent at that, fiddling with the payphone cord. They hadn’t talked all through summer, but when he’d called Balthazar sometime in November it was like nothing had changed.

They didn’t mention the last time they’d been together. Not even vaguely.

“You sure?”

He drove down the next day in his dad’s car. Parking was too expensive in the city- he’d kept it in a junk yard in New Jersey since the beginning of the school year.

Being back in Kansas was sickening. Every street, every corner… everywhere was haunted by…

Balthazar was looking his cheerful self. He was attending college down in Arizona. His hair was lighter and his skin was evenly tanned. He gave Michael the handshake-hug every father seemed to do.

Zachariah was nowhere to be seen that spring. Balthazar told him in a quiet voice about how he’d came out to him, and Zach, being Zach, had flipped.

“Said he wants nothing to do with me,” Balthazar told him.

“No big loss.”

He gritted his teeth as they drove past a certain house on their way to the shops. No blonde woman was sat on it this time, no one staring into middle-distance in a blue linen dress and bare feet. Balthazar bought a pack of cigarettes and they both laughed as they remembered their one cigarette after school. Zach’s name wasn’t mentioned in their reminiscing. He may as well have been dead.

“Did you find him?” he asked later that day, once Michael’s car was hidden in the garage for fear of his father walking past.

“I did,” Michael said heavily as he gelled his hair. Balthazar blinked at him.

Nothing more was said. They went to a party that night. Someone they hadn’t talked to in high school. The two girls from the other school were there, holding hands and looking happy. The taller one cried out when she saw Michael, rushing to embrace him like an old friend while the other went to get him a drink.

He talked with them for most of the night. They were both attending a women’s college in the Midwest. They were both very happy together. They both agreed that Kansas was a hellish place to grow up gay.

“You were with that odd boy, right?” one of them said suddenly, the other nodding in recognition. “The one who went missing? What was he called… Luke? Lucas?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Did he ever turn up?” she asked, like he was a missing sock.

“Yeah,” Michael said. He drank deeply from his cup. “He did. I was with him over summer.”

They both gasped lowly, exchanging a look.

“He’s alright?” the other asked, looking concerned.

 Michael thought of the last night they’d spent together. The kisses and tears they’d left on each other.

“He’s fine,” Michael said, hoping it was still true.

He left for New York a day before the next semester started, buying groceries and flowers as a thank-you for Balthazar’s mom. He hugged Balthazar, passing him a New York Yankees hat before he got into his car.

“Don’t want you balding under that Arizona sun,” he said with a parting grin. Balthazar laughed and waved him off with a smile.

Neither him nor Tim mentioned their own reasons, but they didn’t go out for the rest of the year. He didn’t take something stronger than an over-the-counter painkiller.

He finished his first year with a 3.8 GPA. Minded a professor’s apartment and dogs over the summer in Brooklyn. When school started again he realised he was beyond sick of maths and switched to philosophy in a move that shocked Tim, and himself, to some extent.

The next summer he went up to Boston having gotten a summer job in the central library. One of the girls working there asked him if he wanted to go with her and her friends to Hampton Beach. He froze for a moment before refusing coldly.

That was the summer he started going to church again. Third year started, and he fell nicely into the routine of class, homework, lectures, mass in St Patrick’s cathedral. The year passed quickly. He was minding the professor’s house for the second time when he saw in the newspaper that Jeff Buckley had died. He stared at the words and the picture until his eyes watered. He could taste faint cherries and wine, feel phantom lips on own, hear words of Hallelujah ringing in his ears.

He burned the article while the dogs howled.

“You hear about Jeff Buckley?” Tim asked when they were moving back into their dorm in the fall.

“Who?” Michael asked airily. Tim just shook his head.

“What are you going to do with philosophy?” he asked as Michael worked on a paper, while he read on his bed.

Michael paused, turning his pen slowly.

“I’m going to be a priest,” he said decisively, and went back to writing.

He graduated with a GPA of 3.9. A seminary school in Boston accepted him. He moved up the next month.

“A priest?” Balthazar asked over the phone, surprise colouring his tone.

“A priest,” Michael confirmed.

“Gotta say, Mickey. I didn’t see that one coming.”

Michael was placing his rosary beads by his bedside as he spoke to Balthazar. The room in the seminary school was monkish and bare. Everyone had given him an identically polite smile, all wearing the same solemn clothes and shined shoes.

It was hell. But he’d already had heaven. And hell, he supposed, was better than nothing.


	7. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

_Had I the Heaven’s embroidered cloths,_

_Enwrought with golden and silver light,_

_The blue and the dim and the dark cloths_

_Of night and light and the half-light,_

_I would spread the cloths under your feet:_

_But I, being poor, have only my dreams._

_I have spread my dreams under your feet;_

_Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams._

_*_

Michael was assigned a parish in New Hampshire. It was a little too close to certain places he held in his memory for his taste, but he was accustomed to the New England climate at that point. It was either New Hampshire or New Mexico.

He was twenty-eight years old and had his future as a husband or a father sworn away. The old women in his parish loved it, admired him for it. Half of them volunteered in the church, cleaning, arranging flowers, printing the readings, fussing over him like he was a lost puppy. He spent his small amount of money buying them chocolates every so often to share, saving half of it to buy them wine when a birthday came around.

One of them had something of an ulterior motive that she made quite obvious, dropping heavy hints about how beneficial it would be to bring back altar servers, a practice in the church Michael had brought an end to. Every time she brought it up he’d patiently repeat that he simply wanted to be confident in working without altar servers first. It was a lie, of course. He just wanted the solitude that came before and after each mass as he pressed his hands together in silent prayer, kneeling before a cross.

The church he worked in was old but beautiful. It was on the edge of a city, thickets of trees behind it. He’d wandered through the trees once, around the back, following the bushes of blood-red roses that ran around the perimeter of the church. He sat, eyes closed, back against the cold stone wall, and let the heavy floral scent and the warm sun on his face take him through his memories.

The dust inside could never seem to be lifted, no matter how often the old women hoovered. He didn’t mind. It suited the building. The old stone walls, the high ceilings, the darkly coloured stations of the cross- it looked better with the soft filter provided by dust.

He relented to the old woman’s wishes when she managed to lift a communion wine stain from his alb, taking on her grandson as an altar server. The boy was a nervous wreck, and it took him five weeks to get to grips with ringing the bell at the right time. He managed to stutter out that he, too, wanted to be a priest one day. Michael just smiled. After a year he ordered the medal of St Stephen and presented it to him during a mass just to see his grandmother look as though she would burst with pride. The boy got more confident after that, saying hello each time he passed through the sacristy and holding his head high as he stood on the altar, the medal cord a startling bright red against the white of his alb. He brought a medal of Saint Michael to him one day and shyly asked if Michael would bless it.

“He’s my favourite saint,” the boy said as Michael took it from him.

“Yeah,” Michael said, looking at the tiny engraving. As small as it was, the artist was still able to twist the devil’s face into pain as he struggled under Saint Michael’s foot. “He’s a good one to pick.”

It was easy, so, so easy, to fall into the patterns the church allowed him. He could move through the motions without having to think, falling into Latin prayers and sacraments, baptisms and funerals, weddings and last rites. He visited hospitals, the sick, other priests, nunneries. He read philosophy papers from the local college sometimes. He prayed, said mass, prayed again.

Sundays were his favourite day- unsurprising for a priest. He liked the quiet in the church during the early-morning mass. The altar server- Christopher- went to the midday mass, and so there was hushed silence as he lifted the host, barely able to see the congregation for the light streaming through the window.

Michael would usually pray for a few hours after the second mass was done, taking the time to privately reflect. He’d pray a rosary while the altar was cleared and the altar boy left with his grandmother. One week he was hardly through his meditation on the resurrection when the old woman hobbled back into the sacristy, beckoning her grandson.

“See you, Father.”

“Take care, Christopher,” Michael murmured, thumb and finger gripping the rosary bead.

“Father,” the old woman said.

“You take care too, Irene,” he said, still gripping the beads.

“Father,” she repeated. “Your brother’s waiting for you in the chapel when you’re done.”

“Thank you,” Michael said, and they left him to mouthing the prayers.

It wasn’t until he was halfway through the third decade- descent of the holy spirit- that he realised he didn’t _have_ a brother.

Maybe it was a threat. Maybe it was Timothy. Or Balthazar. Or a secret brother father didn’t tell him about. There was no way it could be- surely not.

He picked up his bible- ready to throw it if it was, indeed, a threat- and walked softly into the chapel, still holding the beads to mark his place.

And it was. It was, it was, it was. He stood in place, hardly able to catch his breath as he saw the boy- the man now, he supposed- sitting dutifully at a pew near the back of the church with his head bowed.

“You don’t believe in God,” Michael pointed out loudly. No one else was in the church with them. It was an odd way to greet someone after so many years, but his brain short-wired. He couldn’t think of anything else.

Lucifer stood, walking to him slowly. The layers of dusty light between them lessened with each step. His eyes, his face, the shade of his golden hair, even his smell… all so familiar once, faded in memory, and now coming back in a technicolour dream, piercing through the veil of time.

“Michael,” he whispered, eyes wide as he approached. His hand extended, as though to touch him, before falling back to his side. Michael understood. He felt as though every nerve was raw, exposed to the light and sounds and pain, and he wanted to reach forward and touch him, too, wanted to see if his hands would still be able to trace their old familiar path. He wanted to lean forward and press his face to Lucifer’s neck and drink in his scent, see if his skin would still bruise so easily beneath his lips. He wanted to kiss him- god, he wanted to kiss him. But if he touched him- if he even brushed against him- he felt like he would burn away to ashes.

So instead he stood, holding his bible and rosary beads.

Lucifer burst out laughing, the sound filling the chapel.

“Oh, Michael,” he said, grin stretching from ear to ear. “The very image of piety.”

Neither of them spoke as Michael heated up two portions of that day’s lunch- a minestrone soup from the lady that arranged the flowers, and soft, homemade bread from the lady that printed the readings. There were few people who Michael could stand to be completely silent with for an hour, one-on-one, when it wasn’t silent prayer or adoration. He just hoped Lucifer felt the same.

They talked that evening over mugs of tea. Lucifer had moved around quite a bit in the last decade. Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Washington State. He’d tried out Arizona for a while, then New Mexico for some time. Small work, he said- waiting tables, washing dishes. Some reception work in a nice DC hotel.

“Pretty much any work that I could get my hands on, really. Strictly legal, of course,” he added when he saw Michael’s raised eyebrow.

He’d been back to Kansas shortly after they parted ways, letting his parents know he was alright before setting off again. He hadn’t been back to Vermont, but he’d been in New York when Michael was in Columbia, apparently. He’d left New York shortly before 9/11. He’d been in Boston when Michael had been, too- though he hadn’t known Michael was in seminary school there. He played the piano now in a hotel chain in the nearest big city, having transferred from Boston when he’d heard Michael was in New Hampshire. He’d managed to find him through philosophy papers- lecture attendance wasn’t always recorded, meaning people could, in theory, simply walk into lectures in colleges they didn’t attend. And that’s what Lucifer did. One of the lecturers sent around a philosophy paper from an old seminary student as she spoke.

“It wasn’t too hard after that,” Lucifer explained. “There aren’t too many seminary schools in Boston. I just told them I was your brother, that I hadn’t been able to get in contact with you. I- I thought you’d send me away straight away, maybe with a slap or two.” Lucifer set his mug down, leaning forward. “Look, Michael,” he said earnestly. “I’d deserve it. I deserve worse. I’m not here to leave you again, and I’m not here to- to blackmail you or say I have nowhere else to go, or anything like that. I’m just… here. All that you want. For as long as you want. If you want to send me away tomorrow, or in a year’s time, you can. I’ll go. If not…” he shrugged. “I’ll stay.”

Michael stared at him. He had to be dreaming. This was too good to be true.

“Lucifer,” he said quietly. “I’ve made vows-”

“And I respect that,” Lucifer said quickly, holding his hands up. “It’s like I said- all that you want. If that’s nothing… nothing _physical_ , then that’s fine. If it is, that’s fine too. If that’s nothing at all… again, fine.”

“I don’t get it,” Michael said. “You’re… you’re young, and single- I’m assuming- I don’t understand why you’d want to… live a life where you don’t get a say. Because that’s essentially what you’re saying, you know. Obviously I’m not going to do anything _drastic_ , but… I don’t understand.”

“I missed you,” Lucifer said simply. “I missed you more than anything. And being near you is enough for me.”

 

*

 

Michael introduced him to people as his brother, Luke Moran. The house market was beginning to crash and ‘Luke’ was his younger brother. The parish house had three empty bedrooms. It made sense.

And so they fell into a new routine. Lucifer would drive down to the hotel five days a week while Michael went to the hospitals and abbeys and convents and houses. Whoever was home first would make dinner for the two of them. They’d go to sleep in their separate bedrooms.

Lucifer had weekends off. He’d read, play piano, charm the old ladies, and help Michael with his sermon. He showed Christopher how to work the thurible, the two of them burning charcoal before the midday mass. He went to each mass, taking the Eucharist from Michael with lowered, respectful eyes. Michael brushed past him in the kitchen once. He still felt like he’d burn if he truly reached for him.

Their routine broke on Michael’s birthday. Irene baked him a cake. As with most Thursdays (luminous mystery on the rosary- Thursdays always made him feel a little detached after those meditations), the old women came around for dinner. Lucifer was laughing and conversing with them, pouring them wine and offering them food, asking one of them how her daughter was doing, another how her doctor’s appointment went. Michael watched him over his half-drunk glass of wine- he only ever allowed himself one, even on his birthday, wanting to steer clear of the strangeness that had overcome him in New York.

The women left and they cleared things away. As Lucifer closed the fridge door Michael took several decisive steps towards him. He pressed their lips together in a short, sweet kiss that tasted of the cake’s raspberry jam. Lucifer’s eyes were wide as he pulled away.

He didn't burn up and fall to ashes. He just felt like he was home. 

“Was that-” Michael faltered. “Was that- okay? With you?”

Lucifer looked like a deer in headlights. “Was it okay with _you_?”

“Well, yeah.”

Lucifer nodded slowly. “Then yes. It was- more than okay with me.”

Michael swallowed. He moved closer to him, circling an arm around his waist. He lifted his other hand to his face, rubbing a thumb across his cheek. Lucifer wasn’t as thin as he used to be- still thin, but more solid in his arms. His cheek was rough with stubble where it was once smooth, and the smell of his cologne, mingled with the heat of his wrists and neck- Michael finally understood what was meant by ‘driven mad with lust.’

Lucifer slept in his bed after that night. It was surprisingly easy to get away with. They just needed to wash two bedsheets instead of one.

Lucifer didn’t wink lewdly during mass, but he would come up behind when everyone was gone and while Michael was praying the rosary, and he’d press his lips to Michael’s neck, and any doubts or guilt Michael had about breaking the vows he’d once held so sacred would disappear. He supposed they were only sacred when the alternative- that one-in-several-billion alternative- wasn’t there.

He came into the study one warm summer’s evening, where Lucifer was playing the piano softly, bathed in golden light. He was reminded of that Fourth of July in Vermont, the heavy smell of flowers and the setting sun. He watched him with a lump in his throat. It was when Lucifer looked up at him, blue eyes blazing, hair thick and soft on his head, that Michael couldn’t bear it.

“Let’s go to Paris,” Michael said. Lucifer laughed in surprise, still playing the music.

“You said something similar the first night we kissed,” Lucifer said, smiling fondly. “That was so long ago.”

“So let’s do it now,” Michael said. “Or maybe not France. Spain, maybe, or the Netherlands.”

“You’re being very specific,” Lucifer said lightly.

“That’s where we could get married.”

Lucifer stopped playing. He looked up.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not?”

“Michael,” Lucifer said. “You took _vows_.”

“And I haven’t exactly kept them,” Michael pointed out. “I could leave for real. And we could go. Start a life there. Together.”

“With?”

“With?” Michael repeated, not understanding. “With each other.”

“I mean money. With what money?”

Michael hadn’t thought about that. He sat down, dejected.

Skimming money from the weekly donations was ruled out immediately. Neither of them wanted to turn to their parents. If they wanted to do this, it would have to be through old-fashioned saving.

Michael’s small income was nothing, and so the burden fell on Lucifer. He practised piano more often, perfecting his pieces and learning more complicated pieces to bring in the tips. He’d considered getting another job to add to their Europe-pot, as Lucifer oddly nicknamed their savings, but Michael had shaken his head when he’d brought it up. They were saving to have a life together- it wouldn’t make sense for them to be apart even more.

Michael’s initial calculations estimated it would take two years- and take two years it did. His eyes watered when he saw the amount in their joint account. Lucifer grinned.

He prepared and delivered his speech to the cardinal. The faith wasn’t for him, he felt he would serve God’s will better elsewhere, et cetera. And it was true. He’d enjoyed his time as a priest- but that was past him now. He asked for dispensation. He was given it.

Lucifer kissed him with delight when finally, finally, they left the parish house and left the keys with Irene, who wished ‘the lovely brothers’ well. They kissed far away from watching eyes, of course.

Lucifer had applied for their visas. They stayed in a hotel while they were processed and sent. Flights were booked. A taxi was booked to the airport. Another hotel was booked near the airport, where they would stay while their apartment lease was finalised. This was real. Michael had never been so excited, nor so scared.

“I love you,” Lucifer said on the airplane, while people put their hand-luggage overhead. Michael kissed him, long and slow, and whether people could see them was the furthest thing from his mind. He squeezed Lucifer’s hand.

“I love you, too,” he said. 


End file.
